Another minor frustration is that Sheva won't use any other weapon but her pistol until she's run out of pistol ammo. This means that if you're fighting a boss and you want her to unleash some serious firepower, you'll have to steal her pistol ammo to force her to switch to something useful. It's also a pain in the arse when there's something good to collect and both your inventories are full (and with only nine slots each this happens often). When you're full, you need to permanently discard an item to pick it up. That's right. There's no way to consume a health item you need without permanently discarding some ammo or another item first. Normally you'll have the better items yourself and you'll want to discard one of Sheva's items but there's no way to do this directly. You have to get her to swap one of her items for yours, discard her item, take your original item back and then finally she can pick up the new item. As you can imagine, this is particularly infuriating when you have to perform it all to pick up a much-needed heath herb in the middle of a boss fight (remember, item management is now performed in real-time). A simple "use" option added to the usual pick-up option for items on the ground would have solved this problem.

The co-op mode in itself is good fun and for the most part the AI partner works well but the biggest concern we have with both modes is the impact it has on the typically oppressive and frightening Resident Evil atmosphere. It's almost impossible to feel as terrified of any enemy or setting when you have a partner backing you up (be they human or AI). The co-op is good enough to warrant having the option included, but we'd prefer it if RE5 had been a single-player experience by default. We wish Capcom had stripped out the AI completely and only used co-op as an optional extra (perhaps as its own standalone mode). It definitely would have allowed the team to create a far scarier and more desperate type of 'one man against endless evil' experience.

"Does this gun make my arse look big?"

Okay, that's more than enough grumbling about the co-op and AI issues for the moment, let's focus on the things the game does really well. Resident Evil 5 sticks very closely to the brilliant formula used in RE4 – it even improves on it in a few ways. The real-time inventory system (while occasionally frustrating) is definitely a step in the right direction. The firefights in RE4 were so intense that it was a real atmosphere killer that you had to pause the game and pull up a menu to switch weapons or use a health item. Four of your inventory slots can now be mapped to the D-pad and flicked between in an instant. It adds a lot more fluidity to the shoot-outs that you can now switch between weapons and grenades in a split-second (you can even see Chris grabbing the weapons from a stylish holster on his back).

RE5 also adds a minor improvement to the movement controls. RE4's quasi twin-stick movement (the right stick could be used to look left and right while walking but Leon's body would remain locked in whatever direction he was walking) has been upgraded to today's standard twin-stick 'turning while walking' control system. For some odd reason though, turning with the right stick is disable when you're running. As you'd expect though, your feet are still nailed to the floor while shooting, to retain the usual Res Evil tension.

As you've probably gathered, RE5 mirrors the gameplay of RE4 very closely, but this can be both a blessing and a curse. As in RE4 you'll spend the bulk of your time dispatching monsters and scouring the environments for ammo and treasure. You still collect treasure from corpses, cupboards, crates and by shooting it off walls. You still spend it on upgrading the same damage, reload speed and capacity characteristics of a very similar range of pistols, shotguns and machineguns. You're still forced to waste a lot of cash upgrading early weapons, only to have to sell them back for a fraction of the price when the better weapons are unlocked. There are still lots of button-mashing cut-scenes. Puzzles are still playing a minor cameo role (they account for about one per cent of the gameplay in RE5).

In lots of ways it's a good thing that RE5 sticks closely to RE4's brilliant template, but in other ways it's a shame it's progressed so little. A lot has happened in the games industry over the past four years and RE5 does feel dated as a result. It sure doesn't look dated, because the graphics look incredible, but it feels old. Other than the co-op mode and a couple of very minor tweaks here and there, the gameplay is identical to 2005's RE4.

The Verdict

This review has been quite negative but that&#Array;s unavoidable when you&#Array;re discussing a good game that follows on from an incredible one. Obviously we wish Resident Evil 5 had achieved more but the bottom line is Capcom has created a solid sequel that is well worth the sticker price. Gorgeous visuals will assault your eyeballs, a great range of co-op options make it a very robust multiplayer experience and an insane wealth of unlockables will keep hardcore fans (like me) replaying it umpteen times.